Barbra Streisand - Love Is The Answer

Ageless and evergreen

The most compelling female voice of the last half century likes her albums to be themed. Thus far in the 21st Century, she’s offered us collections of Barry Gibb tunes, movie ballads and Christmas ditties. Love Is The Answer finds Streisand returning to what she does best, breathing new life into the American Songbook classics of Jule Styne, Jerome Kern and Leonard Bernstein.

Yet, while she’s reconnecting with her jazz club beginnings there’s a tendency to play safe. Streisand is as clear and powerful as ever, but the Johnny Mandel arrangements and Diana Krall production offers little in the way of light and shade; the reserved bossa nova of Gentle Rain and Love Dance would appear to be the closest Barbra will ever get to a mosh pit.

Krall’s piano accompaniment is equally understated, lacking the dextrous vitality of her own recordings and, occasionally (If You Go Away, Here’s That Rainy Day), Streisand is maybe too vocally perfect, at odds with the faltering human frailty of the lyric. That said, Some Other Time (from the Bernstein musical On The Town) ranks among her finest ever performances, and serious fans may be more enamoured with the deluxe version of the album, which repeats the same 12 songs in stripped-down quartet arrangements, shorn of the often intrusive strings.

3 stars 3 stars 3 stars

Sony | 88697433542

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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